The first time I saw grandmaster level play in person was a queen sacrifice which led to bishops mating the king in short order.
If there was a way to not be mated it'd be referred to as "Tactics" or just "A Combination".
And further annoying pedantry: there's no points in chess outside of match or tournament score. Pieces have _possible_ pawn-equated values that someone can use for evaluation, but those are very loose. It's possible to have a naive material evaluation that is not in your favour and still be in a significantly winning position. Better players think in terms of a pieces ability to control squares, how soon it might control squares, the importance of those squares, the potential value of reducing another player's board control, the ability to create tactical threats etc... there's a couple dozen potential evaluative concepts that are often more important than piece value.
Funny enough, your example of a queen sacrifice demonstrates this ;)
Having all those said, the type of piece is still the bigger factor in deciding the value of the piece. You don't often see a queen-knight trade for example. Queen sac is definitely something you don't see every game.
Regarding the idea that you rarely see trades of uneven values: that is largely because positions where such complications are likely tend to be avoided by most players. There are notable examples of players that make/made such trades disproportionately often. Morozevich, Tal, Shirov, Tate, Shabalov, Speelman, etc..
Playing in that manner is largely unusual because it is mentally fatiguing, risky and easily avoided with modern theory.